Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 2, 1994 TAG: 9403020055
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The wispy 16-year-old Ukranian will be joined by her coach, Galina Zmievskaya, and 1992 Olympic gold medalist Viktor Petrenko. Baiul will continue to represent her country in competition.
Bob Young, an Olympic coach who will be the director of the proposed International Skating Center of Connecticut on the University of Hartford campus, said Baiul and Petrenko want to train in the United States because it has better facilities.
"It is fantastic," Mayor Michael Peters said Monday night after the council approved the plan. "It will put us on the map again - not just as the insurance capital and home of the [National Hockey League's] Hartford Whalers, but home of some of the world's best skaters."
The skating center is to be built inside a prefabricated metal structure that would be set up on the northern section of the University of Hartford campus, next to the school's existing sports complex.
It would be open to the public for recreational skating and hockey leagues. Hartford residents and teams would get a 50 percent discount, said the complex's developer, World Skate Inc., a group led by Simsbury, Conn., developer Stephen Fish.
\ JANSEN SEES GREEN: Speed skater Dan Jansen is trading gold for green.
Back in the United States on Tuesday after winning his first Olympic gold medal in his last Olympic race, the 28-year-old from Greenfield, Wis., is racking up endorsements and deciding whether he'll skate competitively for one more year.
"My last chance turned out to be the best," Jansen said at a news conference in East Rutherford, N.J., held by the marketing firm representing him.
Integrated Sports International has signed Jansen to endorse AT&T, the NFL's line of clothing and Apex shoes and clothes, said ISI president Frank Vuono.
Gold, silver and bronze coins with a likeness of Jansen also are being marketed for prices ranging from $15 to $800, Vuono said.
\ GOLDEN GAMES: The 1994 Lillehammer Games were the most-watched Olympics on U.S. television, finishing 14 percent ahead of the record set at the 1972 Summer Games in Munich.
The average rating for CBS' 16 nights of prime time coverage was 27.8, Nielsen Media Research announced Tuesday. The Munich Games, interrupted when Palestinian terrorists killed 11 members of the Israeli team, got a 24.4 rating on ABC.
The Lillehammer Games finished 18 percent above the previous record for a Winter Olympics, set by ABC in Lake Placid, N.Y, in 1980. Those Games, bolstered by the U.S. hockey team's gold-medal victory, got a 23.6 rating. CBS' coverage was 46 percent above the 18.7 rating for the Albertville Games in 1992.
"CBS is entitled to some luck," said Dick Ebersol, NBC Sports' president. "They've had four straight years of no luck."
In the past four years, CBS has lost major-league baseball to ABC and NBC after four years of poor ratings, and lost National Conference NFL games to the Fox Network.
The rating is the percentage of television households in the United States, and each point represents 942,000 homes. The share is the percentage of televisions at the time that are tuned to a particular program.
CBS was helped by the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding saga, which produced ratings of 48.5 on Feb. 23 and 44.2 on Friday. They became the third- and 15th-highest rated sporting events in U.S. television history.
Ebersol said figure skating wasn't the only key to CBS's success and cited the shift in the Olympic calendar that caused Lillehammer to come two years after Albertville. That helped make the personalities more familiar.
"It'll make Atlanta a lot easier to sell," said Ebersol, whose network has the rights to the 1996 Summer Games.
Ebersol praised Rick Gentile, CBS' senior vice president for production, and Mike Pearl, its coordinating producer for the Olympics.
"The key to the success of any Olympics on American television is how well you tell stories, and they did a great job," Ebersol said.
by CNB